she is making tea.
Theo sleeps.
Neila dresses five layers deep, two pairs of gloves over her hands, goes to the back of the boat, out through the engine room, frees the ropes, guides the Hector away from its moorings, heading north.
Chapter 14
Three weeks after Theo ran away from Dani Cumali, from her daughter and her despair and her fucked-up fucking life and
and the past and the moment on the beach and a bit of maths that he wasn’t daring to do and
after he ran away because that was the only thing he was ever any good at doing
Dani called again.
When you see a person you do not want to see
are caught picking your nose
scratching your backside
kissing someone who should really have known better than to be kissed
“Dani,” he said, “You can’t call me I’m not…”
“It’s important listen, I’ve found something important, something big.”
“I’m going to hang up now and…”
“They’ve killed people—so many people—and his own mother, they’re… I’ll fucking tell them who you are I’ll tell them and…”
“Goodbye.”
“Lucy’s in trouble she’s in real trouble—I’ll tell them you’re a fraud, that you’re not Theo Miller I’ll tell them that you’re…”
He hung up.
For a moment he thought he’d felt… something. Perhaps fear? Fear would have been an acceptable reaction and certainly, when he’d first seen Dani’s face, he’d experienced a thing that was definitely…
But fear had faded, and in its place had come a resignation which had been only deepened by breaking into his boss’s computer, compounding the legion offences at his back and now…
he sat on the end of his bed
in a life that meant nothing
and spent his days condemning people to slavery while murder purchased its way to freedom, tax-free.
And nothing was the only thing safe to feel.
Dani tried calling back, and he didn’t answer, turned the world off and slept surprisingly easily.
The next morning, there were nearly a dozen text messages.
Names. Figures. Philip Arnslade. Simon Fardell. Seriously, this is big, this is so big this is
He deleted the messages and barred her number.
Two days later, she was waiting outside his office. He saw her before she saw him, and doubled back the way he’d come, and rode the bus home, even though it took forty minutes longer and someone spilt cider on his trousers.
Chapter 15
The day after his dad was sentenced, the boy who would be Theo sat on the steps of Dover County Court. The cuisine of Dover was fried chicken. The town was sponsored by the ferry companies but also did sterling business in internment camps. Salt had eaten the walls of the houses. Hardy shrubs grew between the cracks in the walls. The tourists went looking for the Roman ruins, but they were hidden behind the car park, and the signs sent you round in circles.
Mum was inside, trying to get one final meeting with Dad before they took him away, but they were on a deadline luv, they had three more drop-offs to make and didn’t get paid overtime.
The boy ate fried chicken, listened to the arcade across the street, the fruit machines, the whack-a-mole, the speed racers and the shoot-em-ups, the kung-fu button crunchers and the tingalingaling of digital gold pouring from the speakers.
Wondered what he was going to do with his life.
He couldn’t imagine any future in which he wasn’t sat here for ever, eating fried chicken until he died. He couldn’t imagine that there was any way, or any place, that wasn’t a fucking naïve stupid fucking dream. The secret, he decided, was not to care. Care about dreams and of course you’ll be disappointed; that was the point of living.
He licked his fingers, and the grease didn’t shift, and sat and waited for the seagulls to get close enough to kick.
A car pulled up.
A man with dark hair growing thin on the top got out, looked at the boy, turned, murmured to his driver, a man in jeans and black leather jacket. Get us some chips, yeah—no salt, his missus had him on one of these blood pressure diet things, but vinegar and extra vinegar because there was always the bit at the bottom which the vinegar didn’t get to. Commands given, he walked over to the boy who would be Theo, towered over him, the curve of his belly pulling the eye upwards in a concave motorway of flesh, and proclaimed:
“Mike’s boy, right?”
“No.”
The man raised both eyebrows, though perhaps he was trying to raise only one, because the expression was crooked, awkward, practised without success. Five foot five, thin hair down to his shoulders, usually in a ponytail, fingers covered in rings—a skull, a blue eye, a silver London bus, a pair of crossed gold knives and a flat band with a pinhole at the top—he was proud of his appearance, and had to remind people of this whenever they forgot to be impressed, which was most of the time.
“I’ve got no time for your boy-shit, boy.”
“I don’t have a dad.”
“Mike said you might say that. Made it out like it didn’t bother him, lying cunt.”
“Who are you?”
“Name’s Jacob. I’m a friend of your dad’s. Him and me go back a long way. Said I’d keep an eye on you said I’d make sure you were okay, not fucking things up, keeping a straight head. Godfather, me, that’s what I am, or like one of those uncles you only see at Christmas, the good kind, the kind that gives you sweets but doesn’t take any nonsense not like others might, not that kind of uncle a proper uncle—I’m like that. That’s what I’m like.”
“Excuse me I’m…”
A hand caught the boy’s wrist as he tried to stand. That hand is the hand that threw a perfect 180 at the Folkestone Champions’ League Semi-Final back last year, the crowd went wild, his whole family had bought these sponge hands with fingers pointing up to the sky, which they waved triumphantly, his son had his face painted special like a dartboard and his missus got a tattoo of the winning triple twenty inscribed on her…
…well, never mind where it was inscribed, point was it was a mighty hand indeed that now grasped the boy.
“I heard you went and applied to do A levels. That’s good. Nice. You should get educated. That’s all your dad ever asked for you and I promised I’d see it was done right. Me, I never got educated, and sure, I made a go of things but that takes a special kind of backbone which I see you lack. It’s something I’d wish for my own kids. Universities… any take your fancy?”
“They won’t let me on the course. I’ll never get to university.”
“Of course they will, they just don’t know you yet, that sort of negative attitude isn’t healthy, now I can tell you, my missus she says that there’s this psychosomatic link between the mind and the old ticker, between—”
“I can’t get sponsorship. The factory won’t sponsor a kid whose dad laundered money through the football club.”
These words, calm, composed, are possibly the first adult things that the boy who will be Theo has ever said, and having spoken them out loud, he realises with a sudden jerk that shimmers through his whole body that he will never be a child again. A flicker of grief, a flash of mourning for a thing lost without a sound, and then he hardens his gaze, and looks into the eyes of Jacob Pritchard, and sees them smiling back.
“Sponsorship,” the older man breathes. “Yeah, sponsorship. I heard about that. Two years get paid through A levels and it’s what, like six years after that working for some bank? Good rate of return that, decent interest on time spent, I respect that, I understand that, not my language but it’s my song. You should go to university. Your dad would like that. It’d make him proud, all warm and fuzzy inside. I see something in you. I feel this great soppy affection for your pasty gormless face, I could kiss you on the lips I could, hold you like my own son, you, me, Christmas turkey and bits of bacon round the sausage, yes I could, yes I can, and so you shall. You shall, boy. So you bloody shall.”